Hello there! Recently there’s something in my mind regarding Jax and zooble’s relationship that I don’t know what to make of and I was hoping to get your perspective on it, if you want to of course. In the past Jax has made jabs at zooble that to me feel queerphobic in nature. Like in episode 3 cold opening and episode 5 bar section. Before episode 7 I bundle up this behaviour with Jax being uncomfortable with vulnerability since zooble’s is both openly trans and incapable of hiding their body dysmorphia. But now that episode 7 is out I notice two instances where Jax genders zooble as fem, when he is trying to distract Caine (“The gals and I were gonna do something which may or not be a surprise for a special ringmaster”) and this scene is almost directly followed by one where Jax calls zooble a woman to their face (“Worry not my dear damsel…”). The show itself has exclusively used they/them for zooble and they do not want to be refer with fem adjectives and while I could see the other comments as things I’d joke around with my close gayass friends all this is not gay banter material (jax is clearly not zooble’s friend but there’s more leeway is what I mean). The two moments are very close to each other so I have reason to believe the show wants you to take notice of the pattern here, jax already has subtextual misogynistic tendencies so maybe the show is going to make it plain text along those? But I’ve tried to see if there were any posts about this and so far found none so I’m no longer sure if I made a connection or just misunderstood and now add the fact that we are almost at the end of the show I don’t know if it has time to tackle such subjects.
Do you have any thoughts on this? Do you think the show has lay down enough for this conflict to take place? And if so Could the writing of the show pull it off so close to the end?
Oh and thank you for your time
I mean, Jax has hella gender issues, is my main interpretation there. Or at the very least: incredibly acute identity issues that he is projecting outward and inflicting on other people to cope.
Jax insists that people are just their archetypes. Nobody is anything more than the role they are assigned, and it isn't possible to change from those roles. "Gangle is The Sad One!" he proclaims, despite how much she's smiling recently. And he proclaims it in total hypocrisy of how much of his time he spends making Gangle sad.
So you see the self-reinforcing loop there. Gangle is The Sad One, and so if Jax makes her sad that's fine because that's what she's supposed to be. She's The Sad One, and that means by making her sad Jax is just doing what his archetype ("The Funny One") is supposed to do, which means he's not doing anything wrong.
And so long as he keeps doing that, Gangle keeps getting more and more sad, confirming that she is nothing more than her archetype, which justifies Jax doing everything he can to make her sad, which confirms that it is impossible to be anything other than your archetype, and so on.
Jax is terrified of the idea of change, the idea that people CAN change, that the WORLD can change. He's terrified that things don't have to be the way they are, because if things aren't ordained by the laws of nature or divine mandate or whatever other absolute power outside of himself, then he will have to face the responsibility of what he has done, and he will have to face the responsibility to be better and make amends.
And that is deeply, DESPERATELY terrifying to him, for reasons which seem intimately connected to his trauma flashback in the big button room. So, to avoid having to face all that pain and fear, he spends a lot of time trying to ENSURE that breaking out of your archetype isn't possible, by enforcing people's archetypes through abuse.
So... connect this to gender. Zooble is this infuriating living proof that people CAN change - Zooble changes all the time! And seems to be HAPPY and CONTENT in that change!
So Jax does to Zooble what he's been doing to Gangle: he tries to bully them into conforming to their archetype, their social role, to their gender (as he sees it). In his mind, I am sure, he wouldn't express it that way. He's just misgendering Zooble because it annoys them, and annoying Zooble is funny, and he has to do what's funny because he's The Funny One. And you know what's super funny? Misogyny is super funny! Nothing is more foundational to comedy than hating women! I'm not being a sexist asshole, I'm just telling jokes! And Zooble should just get with the program already and understand that she can't ever be anything other than a woman ha ha ha no but for real it's just jokes I don't mean it I'm just The Funny One ha ha ha can't you take a joke? Typical hysterical damsel!
The reality, I think, is he is doing it because Zooble is threatening to him. They are threatening both because they embody change, because they seem to be HAPPY with who they are (something which Jax resents instinctually), and worst of all they are threatening because they keep extending more empathy to Jax than he deserves. This is the same thing that set him off with Pomni in episode 6 - she showed him affection and care and he freaked the fuck out about that, because it threatens his self-perception.
Jax hates himself deeply, and his only coping mechanism for that self-hate is to try and convince himself that he has no choice except to be shitty in the way that he is, and therefore it's kind of not really his fault. It's everyone else's fault for not being as smart and clever at seeing through the illusion as he is, and if his behaviour hurts other people, well, then that's also their own fault for not knowing better! That coping mechanism isolates him, and constantly reaffirms to himself that he is a horrible person who cannot change, and anything that threatens the total dissociation from himself that he is pursuing becomes a target for his cruelty.
or, tl;dr basically: hurt people hurt people.
The "I can't change, I can't be anything different, life CAN'T be better, I CANNOT love myself, I CANNOT become who I wish I could be, it is IMPOSSIBLE and everyone who says it's possible is a LIAR who's out to HURT ME and make me look STUPID by believing a LIE!!!" is a kind of defensive, self-protective misery which is familiar to—certainly not all—but to a lot of trans people and their experiences of being closeted and ashamed, and a trans reading of Jax dovetails very nicely also with the ways TADC explores themes of body dysmorphia and identity and self-actualization.
Trans Jax is not the ONLY reading of his identity crisis you can make, of course, the kind of pain and dissociation he's presenting is applicable to other life experiences as well. But it does feel to me like an apt reading for the story as it has presented itself.
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